Factions Backstage Pass Report...

Gaile told me that pets available in Factions would include a Siberian-type tiger and potentially panda bears. Apparently they were in the video shown which will be posted in a week or two.

heh, ive heard talk of Tigers...but a panda? i would have to see taht.

And Shivers of Dread looks suspiciously like Spinal Shivers.

Here's my contribution; was a great party!

Go Blue Team! Flawless Victory *2!! =)

http://forums.gwonline.net/showthread.php?t=389115

Shivers of Dread was indeed the same as Spinal Shivers. A bunch of the new skills were the same as the old ones. They are most likely placeholders for the "real" new skill to be added later.

24 hour (temporary) links to the dance videos on another file distributor. The other download was a bit frustrating for some people. Hope nobody minds.

Ritualist dance:
http://s61.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=1...V1PLF0Q37UHWI4
~33.6 MB

Assassin dance:
http://s61.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=1...I1HLJV80PIJC98
~8 MB

wow all my hopes are finally coming true woot!

As far as the 1v1 thing, I personally don't care one way or the other, I've never been one to care about my online ego - but I can see where some folks might desire it. I would love to be able to do a 1v1 to test particular builds against other armor/profession types, or to solve the age old question "can a ranger/mesmer/necro/ele/monk kill a wammo?" (I say no problem!).

I seriously don't think a simple 1v1 arena would suddenly turn gw into a 1v1 game.

It might, but i sorta doubt it, considering all of the stances and blindbots and such in pvp, you will be missing pretty frequently. Of course until we see the exact details, its hard to say.

Ya. 1v1 or 1vW/E would be a good thing to have to test certain skills. If it's just for testing purposes, we've got that testing area right outside of the Great Temple of Balthazaar. Maybe if there were just some sort of trigger or option that you can go to once you get out in that zone that would allow you to seperate from your party or divide into a certain number of teams. If not, with the new ability to form alliance, I guess that would serve almost just as well as a way to test something out. You just split your test teams into different guilds of the alliance and arrange a guild battle.

I was there too I was wearing the "Detroit, Where the Weak are killed and eaten" shirt. Man that was fun, and the fact that Gaile was so willing to talk to us about the game and get input was crazy awesome. Second, the fact that Anet was like "take as many pictures as you want, and do whatever", was great too.

WOW...
i dont know what to say...

1 question though: Will each town b controlled by a certain faction and will both factions have different towns and missions?

This is some great information!

Thank you very much for sharing everyone.

I'm jealous Dion/Mimi! maybe I should have accepted that offer to UW instead...

I was also one of the winners of the Backstage Pass Contest, unfortunately I couldn't get to a computer until now since I went and hung out with my friend who lives in Olympia but has no internet connection :-P Anyways, here goes my own little report.

I ended up getting to the Science Fiction Museum a little early and went to go wait in the bar upstairs, I saw a couple people in the bar that I would eventually see in the event, but since I didn't know whether they were there for the press event, I didn't want to ask and seem like a complete weirdo if they weren't there for that. So once the time came, I went into the museum and saw a bunch of people around the lobby. I went directly to the group around Gaile and she was telling everyone what the agenda was for the event. After that she told us to start heading upstairs to where everything was going to be held.

So we went upstairs and I immediately partook in the free beer! I walked around the room and introduced myself to a couple of the Arenanet staff hanging about. I met some really nice people, and drilled them about their jobs. Since I'm going to be graduating with a bachelor's degree in Computer Science in a little over a year, I wanted to know how they liked their jobs and everything. Surprisingly everyone that I talked to was glad with ANet as a workplace. No one ever had any mediocre comments about their job. I thought that stood out a lot and says something about the quality of company ANet is. I eventually saw Mike O'Brian talking with some people but didn't want to but into the conversation so I just listened in on his conversation hoping for some juicy alpha leaks :-D

Gaile eventually called us contest winners downstairs for our "super secret pvp thing," so we all headed downstairs. They divided us into two groups and explained what a sealed deck tournament is. Basically they give us a stack of cards with skills from different professions on them. They're not all of the skills, only some skills. We then have to make a 4v4 team using those skills and we cannot have the same skill occur more than once (exception being res sig). My team immediately had everyone sort the cards by professions. I got the Necro skills. First we decided on a team format. I offered the idea of running 2 damage dealers, a debuffer, and a monk. Standard TA format. We decided upon running a necro, assassin, warrior, and monk. Since I had the necro cards, I put together a general melee shutdown character with a skill that looked amazingly similar to Spinal Shivers.

We had about 15 minutes to do all of this, so everything was in fast forward, with chaos and madness running amok. When we finally were done, both teams headed upstairs for the computers and began setting the characters up. I volunteered to be the assassin for the first round. So I built my assassin and while I was trying to get all of the skills that we selected I was distracted by all of the other new core profession skills. I wanted to just stop and read them all! I added a silencing mod to my daggers to increase the duration of dazed since I was running Temple Strike. (imba!!!!!)

Turned out that the monk who was right next to me had no runes unlocked on the account, so Izzy had to input some crazy code to get everything unlocked (I think the code was up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, b, a, start) Everyone eventually got setup though, and we arranged the battle that was to take place on the big screen! Once the battle started, everyone in the crowd and all the noise just got zoned out (as many of the people who were at the GWWC said, you don't notice all of the crowd until the match is over or you're dead) We flawlessed the other team (gg guys!) and the crowd cheered for us. Then the other guys on our team got to play. They flawlessed the other team as well. I'd like to believe Temple Strike with the Silencing mod was what did it for us :-D

After that, the band began to play and we all got a chance to play one of the new type of PvE, transporting baby turtles with some giant siege turtles. You also got some smoke canisters that you hold like a gear, and when you drop it, the siege turtles bombard that area, but the damage only hits the enemy. We fought our way up to a point where we got charged by about 30 guys, 20 of which were rangers. Let me tell you.... perfectly coordinated ranger spike with that many rangers is scary....

After that, the party raged on, the band still playing. The contest winners got to wander around aimlessly in the PvE part of Factions. I eventually ended up going downstairs with some other contest winners where we saw Gaile and began to drill her with all of our questions. We all went down into the actual museum there, and talked more by the life-size replica of the alien queen. We asked her questions for about an hour and then headed back upstairs. When we were down there, someone had decided to join us, and Gaile introduced him to us all. Turns out he was Spooky from Guild Wars Guru! It was great seeing him, and I ended up talking to him a bit after the event ended. He's a great guy, and I see why he got hired onto the team!

When the event began to close down, I went and got my t-shirt from Gaile, and got my picture taken with Jeff Strain. Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures aside from that, since I was so caught up with the whole event. I have the memories though!

As for my observations on Factions, I loved it. There was so much that I was taking in, I was literally speechless sometimes. It was simply sensory overload for me. I was reading new skill descriptions, checking out new PvE areas, admiring the beautiful scenery, trying to figure out what the faction lines and other stuff on the map screen represented, and having fun with everyone.

So I left the event with a GW t-shirt, backstage pass, and skill card for Forceful Blow, the new hammer elite! (Hammer warrior is my thing)

In conclusion, I'd like to thank ArenaNet one more time for letting some lucky fans experience the press release event. The food was great, the open bar even greater, and Factions was the best!

Thank you Arena Net.

somehow I ended up with a bunch of assassin cards.

yeah, thanks arenanet!

*sees the male Assassin dance*

... o_O??? Erm, ok I'm reconsidering making an Assassin right now. (j/k) BUT, the female Ritualist dance was nice.

This game's looking better and better everyday! Thanks for the info.

The female assassin dance is what I'm looking forward to the most. I just love the style of it.

Question: Is this a confirmation, that guild storage (and the other extra guild merchants.etc mentioned before) are only for players with chapter 2(Factions)?

(if so, that'd be too bad, bcuz before when all this talk about guild storage, I think most ppl thought it would be at least, a weekly free update that would be connected to chapter 1 (Prophecies).)

/fenx.

Gaile Gray pic!

I have one, but I told her I would not post it without her pemision.

Finaly !!! rofl

Whats up man are you some kind of freak?

Why some much persistence about Gaile’s Photo?

if you check guildwars.com its in there.


Have fun with Gaile's picture.

is it just me or are the graphics really awsome looking?

its guild wars dude. what did u think they would look like?

LMAO !!!

Go look in www.guildwars.com somewhere in the Events/gallery there's a pic of Anet members including Gaile yeesh

As for the rest, more green pre-searing like areas! Hurrah!

Cannons? Hmm, maybe there will be guns in Factions...

The dances are MOV-files. What do i need to see them?

quicktime...WMplayer...(right codec)

heres an idea...allowing the 1v1 arena to guilds, to help decide officers/guild member status? Like allowing challenges to be issued from guild member to guild member(ie to take an officer spot, to decide issues/arguments)...kinda struck me as a new twist to guild buisness as usual. just give them the option to turn it on, or need it to be ok'd by the participants, the guild leader, etc..

Any word on whether Factions will have 6v6 PvP?

That's what I'm looking forwards to most of all. More organised than TA, easier to put together a group than GvG or HA

eww, a stalker.

I've seen a video of the male Ritualist's dance on IGN and if they don't change it before...it's actually Napoleon's dance from Napoleon Dynamite. If you don't believe me go track down the video! it's hilarious!